Friday, October 29, 2010

Just in from the Hardest working single issue activist in Georgia, Garland Favorito!

Looks like the Diebold/ESS electronic voting machines are acting up again, this time in North Carolina. And it also looks like they're working against their former masters and preselecting democrats this time around. I wonder what'll happen here in Georgia on the 2nd of November.

Perhaps I should consult with the legendary Madame Zelda here in Decatur and see if there's some sort of karmic wave she could direct to help make sure our elections aren't screwed up like North Carolina, that's the kind of shenanigans you get when you absolutely, positively can not recount things like votes.

Here's Garland's Press Release:

VoterGa Supporters,

The North Carolina Republican Party filed a federal lawsuit today against the State Elections Board over vote flipping incidents reported in several counties that use ES&S Ivotronic voting machines. I spoke with the Executive Director, Russell Peck, today and he confirmed the lawsuit. Several cases were reported in several North Carolina counties where voters attempted to vote for Republican candidates but the voting machines consistently showed that they had selected Democrats. The abnormalities go beyond normal calibration errors because in several cases the candidates were pre-checked as defaults when the selection screen first appeared to the voters. Nearly identical abnormalities have already been reported in the 2010 Texas gubernatorial race and the 2010 Nevada U.S. Senate race between Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and challenger Sharron Angle. All instances occurred on ES&S Ivotronic unverifiable voting machines and all favored candidates who were Democrats in the this election cycle.

The vote flipping cases in the 2010 elections are significant because historically, most of the victims of such incidents have been Democrats rather than Republicans. Now that more Republicans are experiencing similar fates, there will be more widespread support to correct the unverifiable voting situation once and for all. If the Georgia Democratic Party had been as aggressive in protecting their voters in the 2008 Douglas County elections as the North Carolina Republican Party has been, Georgia would have been rid of this unverifiable voting equipment by now.

The letter from the North Carolina Republican party Legal Counsel to the North Carolina State Election Board can be found on the VoterGa web site here:

NOTE: The machines used in the North Carolina counties in question are nearly identical to those used statewide to produce the infamous 2010 results in the South Carolina Senate race between Alvin Greene and Vic Rawl. Vic Rawl won the mail-in absentee vote by 55-45% and but the machines recorded a 60-40% margin for Alvin Greene. They also produced roughly 18,000 undervotes and a 15% undervote rate in the hotly contested U.S. House race between Vern Buchanan and Christine Jennings. They were vying to replace the seat vacated by former Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris.

Special thanks to one of our supporters, Aleq Boyle at Seaboq Political, for alerting us to the story and contributing to this report.